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MV-8800 Production Studio

© 2007 Roland Corporation U.S.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the

written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.

MV8800WS10

Getting Around the MV-8800’s Hard Drive

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About the MV-8800 Workshop Series

Roland’s MV-8800 Production Studio is packed with features for making music. It’s a heavy-duty sampler that can do all sorts of things with sounds you sample or import. Its sequencer has 136 tracks for MIDI sequencing and playing back audio, and its set of editing tools is deep. It’s a great box for performing—using its pads or an attached MIDI keyboard—and, of course, it can even burn a CD of your final master mix.

Each MV-8800 Workshop Series booklet focuses on one MV-8800 topic, and is intended as a companion to your MV-8800 Owner’s Manuals.

About This Booklet

All of your MV-8800 sounds and songs are stored on its internal hard drive. If you’re not a computer user, you may find a hard drive’s file and folder system confusing. This booklet explains how to get around on your MV-8800’s hard drive.

The Buttons, the LCD, or a VGA?

On the MV-8800, you can work on the built-in LCD or on an optional color VGA monitor. You can use the MV-8800’s front-panel controls, or a mouse on your VGA screen. No matter how you like to work, there’s an easy way to get things done.

Probably the best idea is to work primarily with a mouse on a VGA, using the MV-8800’s buttons to quickly get in and out of MV-8800 screens. The procedures in this booklet typically assume you’ll be working this way.

If you’re not, don’t worry, because the VGA windows and LCD screens are essentially the same. There are clickable VGA icons for all of the MV-8800’s buttons. You can also press an onscreen button by clicking your mouse or by pressing an F button on the MV-8800. The main difference has to do with how you deal with settings—or “parameters”—and how you select objects.

If you’re using a mouse: If you’re using the MV-8800’s buttons:

You select parameters and objects with a left click. You change the selected

parameter’s value by turning the scroll wheel. You can display an object’s menu by

right-clicking the object.

You select parameters and objects with the 3, 4, 5, and 6 CURSOR buttons.

Change a selected parameter’s value by turning the VALUE dial or by pressing DEC

and INC.

Left click Right click

Scrollwheel

Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet

Throughout this booklet, you’ll come across information that deserves special attention—that’s the reason it’s labeled with one of the following symbols.

A note is something that adds information about the topic at hand.

A tip offers suggestions for using the feature being discussed.

Warnings contain important information that can help you avoid possible damage to your equipment, your data, or yourself.

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Files and Folders

Everything you do on the MV-8800 gets saved on its hard drive as a “file.” (On computers, these are also called “documents.”) Each sample is a file, each project is a file, each patch, and so on. As you can imagine, it’s easy to wind up with dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of files on a hard drive.

To help keep all of these bazillion files organized—and to allow you to find what you’re looking for when you want to load something into the MV-8800—files are stored in groups of files called “folders.”

Each folder has a sensible name that tells you what’s inside it, and has a folder icon to the left of its name onscreen to make it easy for you to tell a folder from a file.

The folder idea comes from computer desktops, which are modeled on real-world office desktops. The idea is that when you want to put away a bunch of documents, you put them in folders, just like in a real office.

Sometimes a folder contains a bunch of other folders that contain similar files, as we’ll see. Keeping the folders themselves organized makes the job of finding things much easier.

The main idea is that folders help you organize things in such a way that you don’t have to remember where anything is—you can just go looking, and the folder names guide you to the file you want.

CD-ROMs and floppy disks may also use folders for keeping their files organized. Getting around on them is exactly the same as getting around on your MV-8800’s hard drive.

Let’s say you’re looking for a synth patch to load from the MV-8800’s hard drive. You’d start by looking at a list of the hard drive’s main folders. Whaddya know? There’s a folder there called “PATCHES.”

Open up the PATCHES folder, and there’s a SYNTH folder.

The name of the folder you’re now looking inside.

Open that up, and there you are: a list of synth patches.

Folder icon

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Up and Down

Using folders can be a bit like drilling down through a pile of stuff, and sometimes climbing back up and out. It feels like this because you view the contents of one folder at a time. Here’s what we mean.

You’d start with the hard drive’s main folders. This group of folders is located at the hard drive’s “root level.”

PROJECTSCD_IMAGE

PATCHESMIXDOWNTR

USERMASTERTR

The root-level folders are also sometimes called “top-level” folders due to this whole digging-down thing—these folders are at the top of the pile.

You open the root-level PATCHES folder and look inside it. Ah. There are folders in there for different patch types.

You open the SYNTH folder, and you see a list of synth-patch files. You’ve just dug down from the PATCHES folder into the SYNTH folder.

SYNTH

BPD: MiniMoog BRSBPD: Space IceHLD: JumpSynthHLD: MG Square1...etc.

Hmm, maybe you want a bass patch. You move back up and out of the SYNTH folder, back to the PATCHES folder.

Open the BASS folder—you’re digging down again.

You decide you don’t want a bass patch. Climb out of the BASS folder and back up to the list of folders in the PATCHES folder.

GUITAR KEY STRINGS

SYNTHVOX_FX

HORNSDRUMKITS

BASS

BASS

See what we mean by up-and-down? Now let’s talk about the mechanics of getting around on your hard drive.

You won’t climb back up from where you are once you find the file or location you want—you’ll just go ahead and load, save, or import your file. We’ve presented the example above for demonstration purposes.

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Getting Into the Hard Drive in the First Place

You’ll need to get around your hard drive when you:

load—a project, patch, or sample.

save—a project, patch, or sample.

You can learn how to load and save projects, patches, and samples in the MV-8800 Owner’s Manual and other MV-8800 Workshop booklets.

As you begin the process of loading or saving something on the MV-8800, you’ll soon find yourself looking at the contents of your hard drive.

Understanding the LOAD and SAVE Windows

Your view of your hard drive is pretty much the same whether you’re loading or saving something, so let’s discuss what you’ll find in all of the LOAD and SAVE windows.

Up Folder icon

File/Folder list

F5 button label

Current drive

Cursor key

Gauge areaSelect Drive

button

Location

Menu button

Location—This shows the name of the folder whose contents you’re currently viewing. (Here, we’re at the root level—not in a folder—so no folder name is displayed after the little slash mark.)

Current drive—This shows the name of the drive you’re currently working with, along with a picture of it. In most cases, this’ll be the MV-8800’s hard drive, as shown here.

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In the MV-8800, a “drive” is any disk you can use for loading, importing, or saving data. Its own internal hard drive is a drive. So is any currently inserted audio CD or CD-ROM.

Cursor key—The CURSOR key provides a little “cheat sheet” that shows you which 3, 4, 5, and/or 6 buttons are currently active. This changes depending on what you’re viewing and what you’ve got selected onscreen. We’ll explain what these buttons do in a minute.

Gauge area—The memory gauge is a bar that shows the amount of free space you have for the job at hand. In our illustration, you see how much wave memory is available because we’re loading patches and their samples. You may also see a Seq Memory gauge that shows how much room you have for sequence data, or a Hard Disk gauge that tells you how much empty hard disk space you have left.

Select Drive button—Click this button to select a new drive from the SELECT DRIVE menu. You can choose the hard drive, an audio CD (for importing audio), or a CD-ROM (for importing sample data files).

Menu button—When you want to load all of the patches you see in a folder at once, click this to select the All Mark menu item before clicking Load.

Up Folder icon—Click this icon to move up and out of the current folder. We’ll discuss this more later.

File/Folder list—This area of the window shows you the contents of the hard drive’s root level, or of the folder you’ve currently got open.

When you’re importing files, each file’s type and size may be displayed in the File/Folder list’s Ext and Size columns, depending on the operation you’re performing.

F5 button label—The job performed by the F5 button depends on what you’re doing. Most loading and saving operations end with a press of the F5 button.

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Opening and Closing Folders

Opening a Folder

To open, or look inside, a folder, start by selecting the folder on the display.

You can open the selected folder in three ways. You can:

double-click it with your mouse.

press the flashing ENTER button on the MV-8800.

press the 4 CURSOR button on the MV-8800.

Closing a Folder

When you close a folder, the display moves you back up one level—you’ll see the folder from the outside, along with any other folders or files stored in the same place.

You can close the current folder by:

pressing the 3 CURSOR button on the MV-8800.

clicking the Up Folder icon.

If you ever get lost and can’t figure out where you are on the hard drive, keep pressing 3 until you get back to the drive’s root level.

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CURSOR Button Cheat Sheet

Here’s a quick cheat sheet that shows you what the CURSOR buttons do when you’re moving around the hard drive:

Moves up the screen, selecting the file or folder above the

currently selected one.

Moves down the screen, selecting the file or folder

below the currently selected one.

Opens a selected folder.

Exits the current folder.

The End

We hope you’ve found this workshop helpful. Keep an eye out for other MV-8800 Workshop booklets, all available for downloading at www.RolandUS.com.

For the latest MV-8800 updates and support tools, visit the Roland U.S. Web site at www.RolandUS.com. If you need personal assistance, call our amazing Product Support team at 323-890-3745.

Up Folder icon